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Putin-Erdogan deal for Syria is ME exit for Obama

September 9, 2016

Putin-Erdogan deal for Syria is ME exit for Obama, DEBKAfile, September 9, 2016

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The fledgling “initiatives” reverberating this week in Washington, Moscow, Ankara, Jerusalem and the G20 summit were nothing but distractions from the quiet deals struck by two lead players, Russia and Turkey to seize control of the region’s affairs. Recep Tayyip Erdogan knew nothing would come of his offer on the G20 sidelines to US President Barack Obama to team up for a joint operation to evict ISIS from Raqqa. And, although Moscow was keen on hosting the first handshake in almost a decade between Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and the Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), neither were known to be ready for the last step toward a meeting.

But the game-changing events to watch out for took place in Hangzhou without fanfare – namely, the Obama-Putin talks and the far more fruitful encounter between Putin and Erdogan.

According to DEBKAfile’s intelligence and Mid East sources, Putin virtually shut the door on further cooperation with the United States in Syria. He highhandedly informed Obama that he now holds all the high cards for controlling the Syrian conflict, whereas Washington was just about out of the game.

Putin picked up the last cards, our sources disclose, in a secret deal with Erdogan for Russian-Turkish collaboration in charting the next steps in the Middle East.

The G20 therefore, instead of promoting new US-Russian understanding, gave the impetus to a new Russian-Turkish partnership.

Erdogan raked in instant winnings: Before he left China, he had pocketed Putin’s nod to grab a nice, 4,000-sq.km slice of northern Syria, as a “security zone” under the control of the Turkish army and air force, with Russian non-interference guaranteed.

This Turkish zone would include the Syrian towns of Jarablus, Manjib, Azaz and Al-Bab.

Ankara would reciprocate by withdrawing its support from the pro-US and pro-Saudi rebel groups fighting the Assad army and its allies in the area north of Aleppo.

Turkey’s concession gave Putin a selling-point to buy the Syrian ruler assent to Erdogan’s project. Ankara’s selling-point to the West was that the planned security zone would provide a safe haven for Syrian refugees and draw off some of the outflow perturbing Europe.

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It now turns out that, just as the Americans sold the Syrian Kurds down the river to Turkey (when Vice President Joe Biden last month ordered them to withdraw from their lands to the eastern bank of the Euphrates River or lose US support), so too are the Turks now dropping the Syrian rebels they supported in the mud by re-branding them as “terrorists.”

The head of this NATO nation has moreover gone behind America’s back for a deal with the Russian ruler on how to proceed with the next steps of the Syrian conflict.

Therefore, when US Secretary of State John Kerry met Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Geneva Thursday and Friday, Sept. 8-9, for their sixth and seventh abortive sit-downs on the Syrian issue, there was not much left for them to discuss, aside from continuing to coordinate their air traffic over Syria and the eastern Mediterranean.

Washington and Moscow are alike fearful of an accidental collision in the sky in the current inflammable state of relations between the two powers.

As a gesture of warning, a Russian SU-25 fighter jet Tuesday, Sept 6, intercepted a US Navy P8 plane flying on an international route over the Black Sea. When the Russian jet came as close as 12 feet, the US pilots sent out emergency signals – in vain, because the Russian plane’s transponder was switched off. The American plane ended up changing course.

Amid these anomalies, Moscow pressed ahead with preparations to set up a meeting between the Israeli and Palestinian leaders, as the Russian Foreign Ministry announced Thursday.

Putin is keen to succeed where the Obama administration failed. John Kerry abandoned his last effort at peacemaking as a flop two years ago.  But it is hard to see Netanyahu or Abu Mazen rushing to play along with the Russian leader’s plan to demean the US president in the last months of his tenure – especially when no one can tell who will win the November 8 presidential election – Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump – or what policies either will pursue.

All the region’s actors will no doubt be watching closely to see how Turkey’s “Russian track” plays out and how long the inveterate opportunists can hang together.

Categories: Assad, Erdogan, Obama and Middle East, Obama and Russia, Obama and Turkey, Putin, Russia - Middle East, Russia - Turkey, Russia and U.S., Syria war, Turkey
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Obama is the Real Turkey in This Scenario

September 6, 2016

Obama is the Real Turkey in This Scenario, Algemeiner, Ruthie Blum, September 6,2016

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It is typical of Obama to condemn the victims of such a travesty. But to describe the failed coup as a re-affirmation of the Turkish people’s “commitment to democracy and the strength and resilience of democratic institutions inside of Turkey” borders on willful lunacy and blindness.

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US President Barack Obama met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday at the G-20 summit in China.

Though the purpose of the two-day gathering was for representatives of governments and central banks to discuss policy issues pertaining to international financial stability, the tete-a-tete between Obama and Erdogan on the sidelines of the forum was not about money. It was, rather, a meeting of the minds on a subject close to the hearts of both NATO allies.

With his Cheshire-cat grin and dead eyes, Obama patted his Turkish counterpart on the back and congratulated him on a job well done. Erdogan had not only survived an attempt to oust him, but had quashed it like a true tyrant. Obama could only look on in awe and envy.

Following their little chat, the two leaders addressed the press at the JW Marriott Hotel in Hangzhou.

“By taking to the streets to resist the coup attempt, the Turkish people once again affirmed their commitment to democracy and the strength and resilience of democratic institutions inside of Turkey,” Obama said. “I indicated at the time the unequivocal condemnation of these actions and spoke personally to President Erdogan to offer any support that we might be able to provide in both ending the attempted coup, but also in investigating and bringing perpetrators of these illegal actions to justice.”

One form this help is going to take, Obama hinted, is the possible extradition to Turkey of controversial cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom Erdogan claims orchestrated the failed coup from his home of self-exile in Pennsylvania.

Obama also extended his “deepest condolences” to Turkey’s victims of terrorism, and said that he and his pal “Tayyip” had consented “to continue pursuing a peaceful political transition in Syria.”

Erdogan also made a statement, calling the president of the United States “Barack,” before launching into one of his usual self-serving rants. Typical of a violent Islamist appropriating the moral high ground, the Turkish president agreed that fighting terrorism is of utmost importance. But the “terrorists” to whom he mainly referred were Gulen and the Kurds. Groups like the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas — which live by the sword, the rifle and the suicide-bomb are just fine, as far as he is concerned.

Obama did not bat an eyelash, however, indicating that the foreign policy of his nearly eight-year administration is firmly intact. And it still involves being on the wrong side of every conflict, while presenting the bad guys in a favorable light. Turkey is but one of many examples.

Let’s start with the failed coup. Erdogan’s paranoia about Gulen is likely unfounded. If any conspiracy theory is in order, it is that Erdogan himself planned the whole thing, in order to strengthen and legitimize his already suffocating stranglehold on the country.

For years prior to the botched attempt, the Turkish president was gradually purging his society of dissent. No institution was exempt from his wrath, with members of the press and academia being placed under a particularly high-powered microscope. Arresting journalists for daring to publish pieces that exposed his behavior was commonplace well before July 15, the date of the coup. But the practice paled in comparison to what has been taking place across Turkey in the weeks since then. Tens of thousands of citizens whom Erdogan deems a threat to his reign of terror have been fired from their jobs, thrown into prison or both. These include people from the military, the police, the judiciary, the political echelon, the media and the universities.

It is typical of Obama to condemn the victims of such a travesty. But to describe the failed coup as a re-affirmation of the Turkish people’s “commitment to democracy and the strength and resilience of democratic institutions inside of Turkey” borders on willful lunacy and blindness. As was the case with the foiled Green Revolution in Iran, when the newly instated administration in Washington watched from afar as the regime in Tehran gunned down protesters trying to extricate themselves from the mullahs dictating their every move, the White House once again simply watched from afar, and let the forces of evil wreak their havoc uninterrupted.

We now fully grasp what Obama was up to in 2009 — a total capitulation to the world’s greatest state sponsor of terrorism, culminating in last year’s signing of the nuclear deal with the ayatollahs. What he has in store for Turkey during his remaining lame-duck tenure in office remains to be seen. But it won’t be good.

This he made clear in his declaration of cooperation with Erdogan on the Syrian front. Referring to a joint “pursuit of a peaceful political transition” in the war-torn country not only made a mockery of the millions of dead and maimed citizens whose plight barely elicits a yawn any more, but served as a signal to Erdogan that he can proceed with the slaughter of America’s Kurdish allies as he sees fit. You know, all in the name of fighting the Islamic State group, the only bogeyman on which there is wide consensus.

Erdogan’s cross-border attack, code-named Operation Euphrates Shield, was launched on Aug. 24 and is still going on. This “peaceful political transition” is being carried out by Turkish planes, tanks and artillery. But Tayyip’s friend Barack — the real turkey in this tale of woe — forgot to mention it.

Categories: Erdogan, Obama and Turkey, Turkey and human rights, Turkey's failed coup, Turkish democracy
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Turkey: Child Rape Widespread, Media Blackout

September 3, 2016

Turkey: Child Rape Widespread, Media Blackout, Gatestone Institute, Robert Jones, September 3, 2016

♦ The journalist who reported the rape for the newspaper Birgun, said that that he and the newspaper received countless death threats on social media for reporting the case.

♦ Turkey’s constitutional court in July annulled a criminal code provision punishing all sexual acts involving children under the age of 15 as “sexual abuse”, giving a six-month period for parliament to draw up a new law.

♦ The facts on the ground indicate that the sexual abuse of children in Turkey is extremely widespread and the Turkish state authorities are not acting responsibly.

♦ When Syrian babies and other children, as well as women, are being raped and treated horribly in Turkey, and their abusers go free; when journalists covering these abuses are threatened; when publication bans are imposed on the crimes committed against Syrians, and when criminals are given “good conduct abatement” by courts, Turkey seems to be one of the last countries on earth to have the moral right to demand visa-free travel in Europe or anywhere else.

Turkey has once again threatened to tear up a controversial migrant deal and send hundreds of thousands of asylum-seekers to Europe if its citizens are not granted visa-free travel to the European Union within months.

Mevlut Cavusoglu, the Turkish foreign minister, demanded the EU drop visa requirements for Turkish citizens by October.

Meanwhile, Syrian children are being raped and abused inside and outside of refugee camps in Turkey.

Nine-Month-Old Syrian Baby Raped; Media Blackout Imposed

A 9-month-old Syrian baby was raped in the Islahiye district of Gaziantep on August 19. The baby is the child of a Syrian family who fled the war in Syria, according to the newspaper Birgun. The family, agricultural day-laborers in Gaziantep, had set up a tent in the field where they work.

On the day of the rape, the parents left their baby with an 18-year-old man before leaving to work a field 100 meters away.

When the parents returned, they saw the young man, a Turkish citizen who works as a shepherd, walking away from the tent. The mother noticed that her baby girl had been raped and took her to a local hospital, where the attack was confirmed.

The governor’s office of Antep announced that the young man had been arrested and brought to court.

Huseyin Simsek, the journalist who covered the incident for the newspaper Birgun, said that that he and the newspaper received countless death threats on social media for reporting the rape.

Simsek tweeted:

“Today, a 9-month-old baby was raped in Antep. There is a medical report. I am being sworn at, informed on, and threatened with death.

“The incident is real. The doctors say the baby is 7 or 9-months-old. We will keep on writing.”

Some Twitter users called the reporter “a PKK terrorist”, “a FETO [Gulenist] terrorist”, “a traitor” and “a son of a bitch”, among others. Other users referred to Birgun as “toilet paper” and called for destroying the newspaper building.

When Samil Tayyar, an Justice and Development Party (AKP) MP from Gaziantep, confirmed the rape on his Twitter account, another Twitter user responded:

“Dear MP, such news should not be used. We are shooting ourselves in the foot. We are giving material to the enemy. Be responsible, please.”

He was apparently referring to the recent criticism by Sweden that Ankara was legalizing sex with children.

Turkey’s constitutional court, in July, annulled a criminal code provision punishing all sexual acts involving children under the age of 15 as “sexual abuse”, giving a six-month period for parliament to draw up a new law.

Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallström tweeted on her official account that the “Turkish decision to allow sex with children under 15 must be reversed. Children need more protection, not less, against violence, sex abuse.”

Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Simsek tweeted back: “You are clearly misinformed. There is no such stupid thing in Turkey. Please get your facts right.”

Turkey summoned Sweden’s ambassador and displayed a billboard in Istanbul’s main airport that warned travelers against visiting Sweden.

“Travel warning!” stated a large advertisement on display in the departure section of Ataturk Airport’s international terminal. “Do you know that Sweden has the highest rape rate worldwide?”

1835An electronic billboard in Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport last month displayed: “Travel warning! Do you know that Sweden has the highest rape rate worldwide?” It was posted in retaliation for a critical tweet by Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallström that read: “Turkish decision to allow sex with children under 15 must be reversed. Children need more protection, not less, against violence, sex abuse.” (Image source: Reuters video screenshot)

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu also said that Wallström had failed to act “responsibly”.

However, the facts on the ground indicate that the sexual abuse of children in Turkey is extremely widespread and it is the Turkish state authorities that are not acting responsibly.

The Islahiye Penal Court of Peace in Gaziantep has issued a media blackout on the rape of the Syrian baby.

“Until the investigation is finalized, all kinds of news, interviews, critiques, and similar publications regarding the investigation file have been banned in the written, visual and social media as well as on the internet,” the ruling said in part.

30 Syrian Boys Raped at Nizip Camp

The daily, Birgun, also reported in May that 30 Syrian boys between the ages of 8 and 12 had been raped at a refugee camp in the Nizip district of Gaziantep.

The assaults took place, over a period of three months, in the restrooms of the camp, which is run by the Prime Ministry’s Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD).

The camp was visited by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Turkey’s then Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, and several Turkish ministers, as well as the mayor of the city on April 23, celebrated as “Children’s Day” in Turkey. The leaders praised the camp, which houses 14,000 Syrians.

A cleaning worker at the camp paid the children for a few Turkish liras to sexually abuse them. The man confessed his crimes and claimed that “it was the children who motivated him to abuse them.”

Eight families of abused children lodged complaints about the attacks. Erk Acarer wrote in Birgun:

“It is understood that some of the families have not lodged complaints against E.E., who sexually abused the children, because they are afraid, since they are asylum seekers in Turkey. That is why they do not want to confront the situation.”

AFAD, the state institution that runs the camp, confirmed the rapes:

“AFAD has taken precautions to prevent the repetition of the incident. Psychological support services have been given to those affected by the incident from the beginning.”

Syrian Children Sexually Abused at Islahiye Camp

Shortly after the scandal at the Nizip camp, it was reported that five Syrian children staying at the Islahiye refugee camp in Gaziantep, and also run by AFAD, were sexually abused by an 87-year-old Syrian national, Ahmed H., multiple times. Again, the authorities of the camp were not “able” to protect the children, whose ages ranged from 4 to 8.

Two of the abused children were his own grandchildren; one was his niece and the other, his nephew. Ahmed H. — apparently before the eyes of everyone — made the children sit on his lap while he sexually abused them.

The crimes were revealed on November 20, 2015, when a person informed local gendarmerie officials of “an elderly man sexually abusing a 2-or 3-year old girl while sitting on his chair in front of the camp.”

The children then told the authorities about the abuse they had been exposed to. The abuse was also proven by surveillance cameras.

On May 3, Ahmed H. was acquitted for the sexual abuse of his grandchildren on grounds that “[t]here was not enough persuasive evidence” for a conviction.

As for his trial for abusing the other victims, he was given “good conduct abatement” by the court due to “his positive behavior during the trial process.”

“The Syrians Staying Outside of the Camps are… Unprotected.”

“The asylum seekers staying at refugee camps are 10 percent of all asylum seekers,” said Mahmut Togrul, an MP from the People’s Democratic Party (HDP) for the city of Gaziantep.

“The Syrians staying outside of the camps are going through a real drama. People are staying in the streets unprotected. We tried to tell the authorities, but unfortunately no one does their duty in Turkey and they do not deal with fundamental problems”

“Since the AKP has become preoccupied with its own troubles, Syrians have been left to their fate… We are faced with a vile situation. They admit their Syrian policy has been wrong. If they had not carried out that policy, so many people would not be so devastated now. It is not enough to say, ‘We have done wrong’. They have to solve the problems caused by this wrong policy. The AKP that has left people idle and uncontrolled has to take responsibility of these people.”

“Where Are the 3 Billion Euros?”

In the meantime, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan gave a speech at the Bestepe National Congress and Culture Center on August 24, saying:

“What did they [the Europeans] say?: ‘We will give the refugees who come to these camps three billion Euros of aid’. Where is it? This year is almost over. Where is it? Not here.”

Reporters and eyewitnesses, however, have revealed that Turkey has allowed jihadists travel in and out of Turkey and has even provided funds, logistics and arms for extremist groups, including the Islamic State (ISIS) and the Al Nusra Front.

The Turkish government — along with others in the region — has turned Syria into a true nightmare, apparently to expand Sunni Turkish influence over Syria and other countries, and to stop Kurds from establishing a free homeland in northern Syria.

Since the war broke out in Syria in 2011, jihadist terror groups have terrorized millions of people, particularly Alawites, Christians and Kurds, and caused millions of people to flee their country. In despair, many Syrians arrived in Turkey and still live under the “temporary protection” of the Turkish government.

If the Turkish government had not facilitated the rise of jihadist terrorism in the region, however, much of this would not have happened.

Turkey now not only leaves Syrian asylum seekers uncared for and unprotected, but is also blackmailing the EU over the Syrians, whose pain and devastation the Turkish authorities are largely responsible for.

Given the increasingly violent crackdown on the Turkish media and pressures against free speech in the country, it is highly probable that the child sexual abuse cases reported in Gaziantep are just the tip of the iceberg.

When Syrian babies and other children, as well as women, are being raped and treated horribly in Turkey, and their abusers go free; when journalists covering these abuses are threatened; when publication bans are imposed on the crimes committed against Syrians, and when criminals are given “good conduct abatement” by courts, Turkey seems to be one of the last countries on earth to have the moral right to demand visa-free travel in Europe or anywhere else.

Categories: Erdogan, Europe, Islamic immigration, Islamic perversions, Media, Turkey - visa free travel, Turkey and human rights
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“Liberal” Turkey Claims Europe Is Racist

September 1, 2016

“Liberal” Turkey Claims Europe Is Racist, Gatestone Institute, Burak Bekdil, September 1, 2016

♦ “There is no such religion as Christianity … In reality, Jesus Christ was a Muslim coming from Jewish tradition … The name of the religion revealed to Christ was Islam …” — Abdurrahman Dilipak, columnist, Yeni Akit.

♦ In Turkey, not even the smallest village of a few hundred inhabitants has a non-Muslim mayor.

♦ Against this embarrassing background, Turkey is accusing Europe of being racist. That would be like North Korea accusing Europe of being a rogue state.

It’s not a bad joke; it’s a very bad joke. Turkey, where all variants of ethnic and religious xenophobia are a national pastime, is accusing the West of being racist.

Speaking after a spat with Austria and Sweden over news reports and tweets from those countries that accused Turkey of allowing sex with children under the age of 15, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu claimed that the behavior of European countries reflected the “racism, anti-Islamic and anti-Turkish (trend) in Europe.”

He is talking about the same Europe where the inhabitants of one of its biggest cities, London, recently elected a Muslim as its mayor. In Turkey, not even the smallest village of a few hundred inhabitants has a non-Muslim mayor.

1831Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu (left) blasted European countries for “racism, anti-Islamic and anti-Turkish (trend),” partly in response to a tweet by Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom (right) that read: “Turkish decision to allow sex with children under 15 must be reversed. Children need more protection, not less, against violence, sex abuse.”

In “racist” Austria, the police immediately arrested two suspects in connection with an attempt to set fire to a Turkish cultural center in the northern Austrian town of Wels — and at a time of rising tensions with Turkey. By contrast, Turkish law enforcement officials arrested five former gendarmerie intelligence officers just recently — nine years after the murder of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink. These officers would probably never have been implicated if the two Islamist allies, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and Fethullah Gulen, his staunchest political ally when Dink was assassinated, had not turned into each other’s worst nemesis in power-sharing fight in 2013.

Yeni Akit is an Islamist newspaper and one of Erdogan’s media darlings, a kind of Turkish Pravda in its fanatical support of the president. Its editors always find a seat in the elite group of journalists who accompany the president in his private jet traveling to foreign capitals.

Recently, one of Yeni Akit’s most prominent columnists, Abdurrahman Dilipak wrote:

“There is no such religion as Christianity … In reality, Jesus Christ was a Muslim coming from Jewish tradition … The name of the religion revealed to Christ was Islam … Christianity is nothing more than a cultural adherence … Judaism is already a tradition that has imprisoned itself to its own race … [Jews’] fears are as big as their rage.”

Funny, Dilipak is an Islamist and his holy book acknowledges the two monotheistic religions he denies.

In another column, Dilipak claimed that “there is no such thing as the Greek nation or the Greek civilization.” Then, in following lines that exhibit typically an Islamist’s confused mind, he claims that “the Greek civilization is a civilization of … plagiarism.”

Yeni Akit did not need to hide its racism even in the aftermath of a bloodshed the entire world — except Islamist- denounced. In July, in Nice, France, shortly after the Islamist terror attack that killed more than 80 civilians, the newspaper’s headline read: “France, the perpetrator of genocide in Africa, deserves worse.”

Yeni Akit is a perfect reflection of Turkey’s popular and official racism. In March, when a jihadist suicide bomber killed three Israelis and one Iranian on a busy Istanbul street, Irem Aktas, head of the women’s and media division of the AKP branch in Istanbul’s Eyup district, commented on social media that: “Let the Israeli citizens be worse, I wish they all died.” When she wrote that in her Twitter account, at least 11 Israeli citizens injured by the bomb were being treated at Turkish hospitals. She was not prosecuted for her remarks that “wished death” to injured Israelis.

Turkey’s religious — and ethnic — xenophobia can take amusing turns, too. In September 2015, Turkish authorities banned showing religious symbols and playing music related to various religions at yoga centers. They said that having Buddha sculptures and mantra symbols, as well as playing religious music and burning incense, could be considered violations which could lead to the closure of these centers.

About a month before Turkey’s war on the “religion of yoga,” the country’s top religious body, the Religious Affairs General Directorate, issued a warning about the spreading of the new “religion” of Jediism” — the religion of the Jedi warriors in the Star Wars series. “Jediism … is spreading today in Christian societies. Around 70,000 people in Australia and 390,000 people in England currently define themselves as Jedis,” the article said, before engaging in an Islamic-based critique of a number of Hollywood blockbusters.

Against this embarrassing background, Turkey is accusing Europe of being racist. That would be like North Korea accusing Europe of being a rogue state.

Categories: Erdogan, Europe, Islamic hatred of others, Islamic invasion, Islamic media, Islamic refugees, Islamic supremacy, Islamisation, Israel, Racism, Turkey, Turkey and Christianity
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Erdogan tells US: Stop backing the Kurds

August 30, 2016

Erdogan tells US: Stop backing the Kurds, DEBKAfile, August 30, 2016

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US-Turkish discord over the Turkish army’s onslaught on the Kurds of northern Syria reached a new low Wednesday, Aug. 30, when the presidential palace spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said in Ankara: “The US must revise its policy of supporting Kurdish forces.”

The demand came after a senior US official called on “all the armed actors in the fight against the Islamic State in northern Syria to stand down,” in an effort to contain the new conflict dragging northern Syria into further chaos.

The call was addressed equally to Ankara to freeze its military operations in Syria and to the Kurdish PYD-YPG militia to halt the flow of fraternal reinforcements for defending Mabij, the Syrian town the militia wrested from ISIS earlier this month with US assistance.

DEBKAfile’s military sources report that the Turkish army and Kurdish forces are already tensely aligned for a decisive battle over Manbij that will determine the outcome of the Turkish invasion of Aug. 24. President Tayyip Erdogan calculates that a Turkish victory will force the Kurds to retreat to the eastern bank of the Euphrates and away from the Turkish border, while Kurdish leaders are determined to halt the Turkish army at the gates of the town, and so brand the invasion a fiasco and carry off an epic victory.

The Obama administration is making a huge effort to avert this confrontation. In the hope of reining in the Turks, Vice President Joe Biden arrived in Ankara on the day their army crossed the Syrian border and met them halfway by issuing an ultimatum to the Kurds to withdraw to east of the Euphrates or else lose US support.

Unheeding of the US warning, the Kurds went forward to build up their fighting strength and engage the Turkish army.

Ankara suspects that the Americans are continuing notwithstanding to give the Kurds weapons and assistance on the quiet.

Washington fears that a Turkish-Kurdish showdown in Manbij will further destabilize the military situation such as it is in northern Syria and northern Iraq, and all their efforts to persuade the Kurds to lead the ground forces of the coalition offensives against ISIS will go for nothing.

In an earlier report on Monday, DEBKAfile covered the conflict between Turkey and the Kurds as it unfolded after the Turkish invasion.

An all-out Turkish-Kurdish war has boiled over in northern Syria since the Turkish army crossed the border last Wednesday, Aug. 24 for the avowed aim of fighting the Islamic State and pushing the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia back. Instead of falling back, the Kurds went on the offensive and are taking a hammering. This raging confrontation has stalled the US-led coalition offensive against ISIS and put on indefinite hold any US plans for campaigns to drive the jihadists out of their Syrian and Iraqi capitals of Raqqa and Mosul.

The Kurdish militia ground troops, who were backed by the US and assigned the star role in these campaigns, are now fully engaged in fighting Turkey. And, in another radical turnaround, Iraqi Kurdish leaders (of the Kurdish Regional Republic) have responded by welcoming Iran to their capital, in retaliation for the US decision to join forces with Turkey at the expense of Kurdish aspirations.

The KRG’s Peshmerga are moreover pitching in to fight with their Syrian brothers. Together, they plan to expel American presence and influence from both northern Syria and northern Iraq in response to what they perceive as a US sellout of the Kurds.

DEBKAfile’s military analysts trace the evolving steps of this escalating complication of the Syrian war and its wider impact:

  • Since cleansing Jarablus of ISIS, Turkey has thrown large, additional armored and air force into the battle against the 35.000-strong YPG Kurdish fighters. This is no longer just a sizeable military raid, as Ankara has claimed, but a full-fledged war operation. Turkish forces are continuing to advancing in three directions and by Sunday, Aug. 28 had struck 15-17km deep inside northern Syria across a 100km wide strip.
    Their targets are clearly defined: the Kurdish enclave of Afrin in northwest Syria and the Kurdish enclave of Qamishli and Hassaka in the east, in order to block the merger of Kurdish enclaves into a contiguous Syrian Kurdish state.
    Another goal was Al-Bab north of and within range of Aleppo for a role in a major theater of the Syrian conflict. To reach Al-Bab, the Turkish force would have to fight its way through Kurdish-controlled territory.
  • The Turks are also using a proxy to fight the Syrian Kurds. Thousands of Syrian Democratic Army (SDF) rebels, whom they trained and supplied to fight Syria’s Bashar Assad army and the Islamic State, have been diverted to targeting the Kurds under the command of Turkish officers, to which Turkish elite forces are attached.
  • A Turkish Engineering Corps combat unit is equipped for crossing the Euphrates River and heading east to push the Kurds further back. Contrary to reports, the Turkish have not yet crossed the river itself or pushed the Kurds back – only forded a small stream just east of Jarablus. The main Kurdish force is deployed to the south not the east of the former ISIS stronghold.
KurdishWar480
  • Neither have Turkish-backed Syrian forces captured Manbij, the town 35km south of Jarablus which the Kurds with US support captured from ISIS earlier this month. Contrary to claims by Ankara’s spokesmen, those forces are still only 10-15km on the road to Mabij.
  • Sunday, heavy fighting raged around a cluster of Kurdish villages, Beir Khoussa and Amarneh, where the Turks were forced repeatedly to retreat under Kurdish counter attacks. Some of the villages were razed to the ground by the Turkish air force and tanks. At least 35 villagers were reported killed.
  • In four days of fierce battles, the Kurds suffered 150 dead and the Turkish side, 60.
  • DEBKAfile military sources also report preparations Sunday to evacuate US Special Operations Forces and helicopter units from the Rmeilan air base near the Syrian-Kurdish town of Hassaka. If the fighting around the base intensifies, they will be relocated in northern Iraq.
  • Fighters of the Iraqi-Kurdish Peshmerga were seen removing their uniforms and donning Syrian YPG gear before crossing the border Sunday and heading west to join their Syrian brothers in the battle against Turkey.
  • The KRG President Masoud Barazani expects to travel to Tehran in the next few days with an SOS for Iranian help against the US and the Turks. On the table for a deal is permission from Irbil for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards to win their first military bases in the Iraqi Kurdish republic, as well as transit for Iranian military forces to reach Syria through Kurdish territory..

Categories: Erdogan, Kurdish fighters, Obama and Turkey, Syrian war, Turkey
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Turkey’s Official “Cocktail Terror”

August 28, 2016

Turkey’s Official “Cocktail Terror”, Gatestone Institute, Burak Bekdil, August 28, 2016

♦ In its latest attack in Turkey, ISIS used a child suicide bomber to attack a wedding ceremony. More than 50 victims were killed, of whom 26 were less than 18 years old.

♦ This is premeditated, officially-tolerated murder. Evidence? Two opposition parties appealed to parliament five times asking for a parliamentary investigation into ISIS and its activities in Turkey. All five requests were rejected by the votes of the ruling AKP Party, Erdogan’s powerful political machine.

♦ The opposition claims SADAT International Defense Consultancy, which was established by soldiers dismissed from the military due to Islamist activities, offers ISIS operatives training in “intelligence, psychological warfare, sabotage, raiding, ambushing and assassination.” Erdogan this month appointed the owner of SADAT, retired Brigadier General Adnan Tanriverdi, as his chief presidential advisor.

Failing to name Islamic terror has cost Turkey hundreds of lives and will likely cost it hundreds more, as the country’s leaders — and many others, especially in the West — are still too demure to call Islamic terror by its name. Without a realistic diagnosis, the chances of a successful treatment are always close to nil, and Turkey’s leaders stubbornly remain on the wrong side of the right diagnosis.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s theory that “there is no Islamic terror,” coupled with his persistent arguments that Islamist radicals hit Europe because of Islamophobia in the Western world, are not only too remote from reality but have now become a curse in his own country.

As early as 2014, cars began to be seen in the streets of Istanbul sporting the black flag of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The same year, Islamists opened a shop selling T-shirts featuring the same flag. ISIS-related magazines went ahead with open hate content even though, in March 2014, ISIS spilled its first blood in Turkey when an ISIS team ambushed a police checkpoint and killed one police officer, one soldier and one civilian.

In its first suicide attack on June 5, 2015, ISIS targeted a pro-Kurdish rally in Diyarbakir, killed four people and injured 279. It targeted, once again, a pro-Kurdish gathering in July 2015 in Suruc, a small town bordering Syria, killed more than 30 people and injured more than 100.

When, in October 2015, Islamists attacked the main train station in Ankara and killed more than 100 civilians in the worst terror attack in Turkey’s history, Turkish officials were once again too demure to blame it on radical Islamists. Instead, they invented an unconvincing concept, “cocktail terror,” putting the blame on a mixture of various terror groups.

In a span of just one year, starting with the Suruc suicide bomb attack in July 2015, ISIS terror attacks in Turkish soil have killed 265 people and injured 1,256.

In its latest attack in Turkey on August 21, ISIS did something it had not done before: it used a child suicide bomber with explosives detonated by a remote controller. The target was a wedding ceremony in the southern city of Gaziantep; most of the victims were children, like the suicide bomber himself. More than 50 victims were killed, of whom 26 were less than 18 years old. Two of the victims had just turned four.

1816On August 21, ISIS terrorists used a child suicide bomber to kill more than 50 people, mostly children, at a wedding in Gaziantep. (Image source: ABC News video screenshot)

This is premeditated, officially-tolerated murder. Evidence? Between Aug. 14, 2014 and June 29, 2016, two opposition parties, the social democrat Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP), appealed to parliament five times asking for a parliamentary investigation into ISIS and its activities in Turkey. All five requests were rejected by the votes of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), Erdogan’s powerful political machine. Why would a ruling party vote down an investigation request into a barbaric terror group that has killed hundreds of people in its own country? But there is more.

In July, slightly more than a month before the ISIS’s child bomber was blown up along with more than 50 others in Gaziantep, a court in the same city reduced the jail sentence of an ISIS militant due to “good conduct.” Good conduct?! The man did not even stand before the court, as the police were unable to apprehend him.

At the end of June, the main opposition party, CHP, made a parliamentary inquiry into the activities of an Istanbul-based defense company accused of having links to ISIS. The opposition claims the SADAT International Defense Consultancy, established in the early 2000s by soldiers dismissed from the military due to Islamist activities, offers “irregular warfare training” in various fields including “intelligence, psychological warfare, sabotage, raiding, ambushing and assassination.” The inquiry said: “…that special commissioned and non-commissioned officers have begun working at this company with high salaries, and that in camps irregular warfare training has been given to ISIS and its derivatives.”

SADAT’s owner and chief official is retired Brigadier General Adnan Tanriverdi widely known for his close relations with Erdogan and the AKP.

Since the opposition made the parliamentary inquiry, it has not heard from the government benches about its request for an investigation into SADAT. But, after the inquiry, the government made a move. In August Erdogan appointed Tanriverdi as his chief presidential advisor.

Turkey’s war with radical jihadists is a too demure and reluctant one — if not fake altogether.

Categories: Erdogan, Islamic terrorism, Turkey
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Syrian Kurds clash with Turkish forces

August 26, 2016

Syrian Kurds clash with Turkish forces, DEBKAfile, August 26, 2016

(Please see also, Biden Gushes to Erdoğan That American People ‘Stand in Awe’ of Turkish ‘Courage’ — DM)

Tanks_invading_Syria_B_24.8.16

Just a few days ago, the Americans were speaking highly of Kurds as the sharpest sword in the coalition’s arsenal for vanquishing the jihadists. Since Biden’s deal with Erdogan on Wednesday, Washington can forget about the Syrian Kurdish PYG or the Iraqi Kurdish Pershmerga as spearheads of the campaigns to liberate Raqqa in Syria and Mosul in Iraq for ISIS.

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Syrian Kurdish militia commanders are flouting the ultimatum US Vice President Joe Biden handed them Wednesday, Aug. 24 to retreat to east of the Euphrates or else forfeit US support.  Instead, DEBKAfile’s military sources report, they decided to stand their ground and fight it out with the Turkish army.

The first clash occurred Thursday overnight, when Kurdish forces from Manbij attacked the positions taken by Turkish tanks in Jarablus, hours after Islamic State forces were put to flight from this border town.

The battles continued into Friday morning, Aug. 26.

The US ultimatum to the Kurds was the outcome of understandings US Vice President Joe Biden reached with Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara on Wednesday, hours after the Turkish army crossed into northern Syria.

“Syrian Kurdish forces will lose US support if they don’t retreat to east bank of Euphrates,” the US vice president stated at a news conference.

Yet Thursday night, Turkish officials made an effort to counteract the impression that their military intervention in Syria was coordinated with the United States. They announce that Russian chief of staff Gen. Valery Gerasimov would be arriving in Ankara Friday for talks with his Turkish counterpart, Gen. Hulusi Akar.

The US commander of American troops in Iraq and Syria, Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend, had meanwhile instructed all US Special Operations personnel to withdraw from Syrian-Kurdish YPG militia units, and return to the N. Syrian Rmeilan airfield near Hassaka. This is reported from DEBKAfile military and intelligence sources.

The US general also stopped artillery ammo supplies to the Kurdish militia and the transfer of field intelligence from the fighting in areas newly occupied by the Turkish army.

These measures were temporary, the US officers informed Salih Muslim, Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) leader, and would be lifted after his YPG militia was instructed to pull back from northern Syria and head east of the Euphrates.

Only last week, the Syrian Kurdish militia was riding high, covered in praise for its feat in capturing Manbij with the assistance of US Special Forces.

Their comedown after the US decided to jump aboard the Turkish invasion would be complete, if they complied with the Biden ultimatum. They would forfeit all their hard-won gains from years of combat against the Islamic State, and have to forget their dream of a Kurdish state linking their enclaves along the 900km Syrian-Turkish border.

A stream of information and misinformation is meanwhile muddying the waters as the Kurds in Syria and Iraq absorb the shock of the American turn against them.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Ankara said Thursday that US Secretary of State John Kerry had informed the Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu that the US-backed Syrian Kurdish militias had begun their retreat to the eastern bank of the Euphrates River.


 ManbijKoteret480

US sources qualified this claim, confirming only that a ‘main element’ of the Kurds has retreated, but not the entire force. The Kurds were evidently in no hurry to take any marching orders either from Turkey or the United States.

A short Kurdish statement claimed that their forces had indeed withdrawn to the eastern bank of the Euphrates River, but DEBKAfile’s military sources military sources say that a large body of Kurdish fighters is still in place west of the river. Indeed our sources found Kurdish PYG officers adamant in their determination to stay put and take on the Turkish army.

After the Turkish invasion Wednesday, Kurdish leader Salih Muslim declared, “Turkey will be defeated in Syria along with the Islamic State.”

Kurdish units also took up positions on the roads leading to the US base at Rmeilan, ready enforce a blockade. A Kurdish food convoy due at the base Thursday did not arrive.

In Iraq, there is word of a Kurdish Peshmerga mutiny against US instructors at the bases where they are training for the offensive to recapture Mosul from the ISIS.

However, the events of this week around northern Syria have dealt a major setback to the US-led war on ISIS.

Just a few days ago, the Americans were speaking highly of Kurds as the sharpest sword in the coalition’s arsenal for vanquishing the jihadists. Since Biden’s deal with Erdogan on Wednesday, Washington can forget about the Syrian Kurdish PYG or the Iraqi Kurdish Pershmerga as spearheads of the campaigns to liberate Raqqa in Syria and Mosul in Iraq for ISIS.

Categories: Biden, Erdogan, Foreign policy, Kerry, Kurdish fighters, Russia, Syria war, U.S. Military
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Biden Gushes to Erdoğan That American People ‘Stand in Awe’ of Turkish ‘Courage’

August 25, 2016

Biden Gushes to Erdoğan That American People ‘Stand in Awe’ of Turkish ‘Courage’ PJ Media, Bridget Johnson, August 25, 2016

(Erdogan’s Turkey is a transparently great “democracy” where some have human rights; Obama must be envious. — DM) 

biden erdoganVice President Joe Biden and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan shake hands after a meeting in Ankara, Turkey, on Aug. 24, 2016. (Kayhan Ozer, Presidential Press Service Pool via AP)

Standing at the side of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan during an Ankara press conference today, Vice President Joe Biden tried to soothe relations with the Islamist government by slamming last month’s coup attempt as “a violent betrayal by a small group of folks who were sworn to defend the very people that they say they care and love.”

“The attempted coup went to the heart of who your people are — principled, courageous and committed. And for a people who have struggled so long to establish a true democracy, this was, from my perspective and the president’s perspective, the ultimate affront. So my heart goes out to not just the government, but to the Turkish people,” Biden said.

Biden added it’s “hard for Americans to picture the possibility” of the military trying to overthrow the U.S. government “when they thought the president was on vacation with his family.”

The vice president toured damage to Turkey’s parliament left from the coup attempt.

“I can understand, Mr. President, how some of your countrymen would feel that the world didn’t respond to the existential crisis your country was facing rapidly enough, or with the appropriate amount of solidarity and compassion and empathy,” he continued. “And that’s why, Mr. President — you’ve known me for a while — that’s why I wanted to personally be here, and was asked by the President to personally be here to represent, to tell you and all of your colleagues and your countrymen how very, very, very sorry I am, the president is, the American people are for the suffering and loss you have endured.”

Biden added that “the American people also stand in awe of the way your countrymen respond to the way you respond personally — going on the Internet through, my guess is on Facebook — I’m not sure which vehicle you used — with a portable — or with a cellphone, telling your people to rise up, take back the street, do not let these terrorists, which is what they ended up being, steal their patronage, their — who they are.”

Erdoğan used Facetime during the coup attempt, filming from an unknown location, telling Turks to get into the streets and oppose the coup.

Erdoğan’s purge since the coup attempt has included basically any secular opponent to his Islamist government: more than 40,000 people have been rounded up, from soldiers to jurists to bankers and even teachers and a comedian. Human rights groups have charged that the rule of law has gone out the window as detainees have been kept in makeshift facilities without proper access to legal representation and suffering beatings, rapes and starvation. Erdoğan has also intensified his battle against the free press.

He has also demanded that the U.S. government extradite Fethullah Gülen, a onetime ally of Erdoğan turned opponent who lives in Saylorsburg, Pa.

A senior administration official told reporters this week that Turkey has filed four extradition requests, but none of the charges are coup-related.

“I personally, the president personally, the American people stand in awe of the courage of your people,” Biden gushed during the press conference. “And we understand, Mr. President, the sensitivities the Turkish people feel about international security. That’s why the United States is committed to doing everything we can to help bring justice for all those responsible for this coup attempt while adhering to the rule of law.”

On the extradition request, Biden said he knows “of no other case where as much time is being spent to make sure we find enough data to meet a court standing.”

“I suspect it’s hard for people to understand that as powerful as my country is, as powerful as Barack Obama is as president, he has no authority under our Constitution to extradite anyone. Only a federal court can do that. Nobody else can do that. If the president were to take this into his own hands, what would happen would be he would be impeached for violating the separation of powers,” he added.

Erdoğan said he and Biden “had the opportunity to discuss this failed coup at every extent possible,” once again calling Gülen’s progressive Islam movement a “terrorist organization” and stressing that Gülen “needs to be extradited to Turkey as soon as possible.”

He also demanded that U.S. authorities arrest and detain Gülen and his associates while considering the extradition request, and “I’m confident that the United States will take the necessary measures to cater to our expectations in that regard.”

Erdoğan also snapped at a reporter for using the term Islamic State during a question. “The Islamic State cannot be associated with terrorism. Daesh is a terrorist organization,” he said, using the pejorative Arabic acronym for ISIS. “They are terrorists. Islam is a derivative of the word ‘peace,’ or the prefix ‘peace’ stands for Islam, which is a derivative of Islam. A member of the Islamic faith can never engage in these massacres, in this carnage.”

Categories: Biden, Erdogan, Obama and Turkey, Turkey's failed coup, Turkish democracy
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Turkey Uses Bilateral Ties with Israel as Alibi

August 24, 2016

Turkey Uses Bilateral Ties with Israel as Alibi, DEBKAfile, August 24, 2016

Jarablus_24.8.16Turkish army attacks Syrian Jarablus Wednesday, Aug. 23

The wily Erdogan appears to believe that he can use his friendship with Israel as a fig leaf. Whenever the US or others chastise him for his negative actions, he can point out that even Israel goes along with his policies

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Turkey – in full momentum since the Erdogan-Putin summit on Aug. 9 – is setting a rapid pace for its rapprochement with Israel. Saturday, Aug. 20, the Turkish parliament ratified the reconciliation agreement Ankara signed with Jerusalem and Prime Minister Binali Yildirim announced that ambassadors would be exchanged soon.

There is even mention of Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdogan visiting Israel in September.

Both Ankara and Jerusalem are quickly moving on from their sharp exchange of recriminations this week, over the massive IDF military retaliation against Hamas Sunday and Monday for a missile fired from the Gaza Strip.

Israel harshly reproved Turkey for its condemnation, as hardly in a position to interfere in another government’s response to terrorism.

Erdogan uncharacteristically held silent and let Israel have the last word..

Erdogan and Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu are clearly of one mind that nothing should be allowed to hinder their burying of the hatchet.

In today’s Middle East’s crazy slalom of events, whereby every few hours, new conflicts spring up and new deals are forged – only to end in tatters a couple of days later (e.g. Tehran’s abrupt reversal of its permission to allow the Russia an air base in Western Iran), bilateral realpolitik is bound to be the order of the day.

Yesterday’s enemy might be today’s friend, and today’s friend might become tomorrow’s enemy.

The mercurial Turkish president initiated a series of earthshaking moves in the past two weeks:

  • He rid the strategic southern Turkish Incirlik base of the US nuclear arsenal, and is keeping the future of US warplanes there for operations in Syria up in the air, amid talk of opening the base for the use of the Russian air force.
  • Joined Russia and Iran to establish a new Middle East alliance.
  • Opened a direct line of communication from Ankara to Syria’s Bashar Assad. Turkish MIT Secret Service director Hakan Fidan paid a visit to Damascus.
    Working with Israel therefore did not stop the Turkish leader from going after a deal with the Syrian ruler at the same time.
  • Erdogan plans a visit to Tehran for a grand friendship photo op with Iranian leaders with the same fanfare as his summit with Vladimir Putin.
  • That summit which ended in an accord to prevent the Kurds from gaining independence in Syria and Iraq let Ankara off the leash for an all out offensive against the YPG Syrian Kurdish army in northern Syria.
  • Wednesday, Aug. 24, the Turkish army crossed the border to attack ISIS strongholds in the border town of Jarablus, so intervening in the Syrian conflict to block the Kurdish assault on the jihadists.
  • Ankara has also stepped up its interference with Egyptian and Saudi policies in the Middle East.

How does the Turkish leader reconcile his contradictory polices?

On the one hand he initiates open friendship with Israel while, at the same time, forging alliances with its enemies in Tehran, Damascus and Gaza. How does Israel perceive Ankara’s hostile steps against its friends and allies, the Americans, Egyptians, Saudi and Kurds?

The wily Erdogan appears to believe that he can use his friendship with Israel as a fig leaf. Whenever the US or others chastise him for his negative actions, he can point out that even Israel goes along with his policies.

As for Netanyahu, he appears to have taken a leaf out of President Barack Obama’s Middle East book.

In the face of all Erdogan’s provocations and betrayals, Obama goes overboard to hold Washington’s line to Ankara in place and hold Turkey back from irrevocably quitting NATO.

To do just that, he even sent Vice President Joe Biden to Ankara Wednesday, Aug. 24.

As a global power, the US can afford to look the other way when Erdogan goes over the top, even though it is hard to see where he is going.

Israel, on the other hand, can’t afford to let itself be used as Erdogan’s alibi, without damaging its precious ties with Washington and risk impairing the understandings Netanyahu has been able to develop with Egypt and Saudi Arabia. It would be a mistake to try and isolate the relationship with Ankara as a purely bilateral issue without expecting a backlash on Israel’s other ties.

Categories: Erdogan, Israel and Turkey, Netanyahu
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BRUTAL MURDER: Trans Rights Advocate Raped, Burned Alive

August 22, 2016

BRUTAL MURDER: Trans Rights Advocate Raped, Burned Alive, Counter Jihad, August 22, 2016

Hande Kader was 22 years old.  Kader made a living through what Buzzfeed gently refers to as “sex work,” but was not in any sense ashamed of it.  Rather, Kader was an outspoken advocate for transgender rights and regularly appeared in public to appeal for those rights.  On the 12th of August, Kader was raped and burned alive.

Turkey recently had a shadow report submitted for United Nations inquiry regarding the Turkish culture of violence targeting gays, lesbians, and transgender citizens.  Dozens of murders have targeted these communities.  Turkish politics have been swinging in the direction of Islamist parties in the same period, and since the purge following a coup attempt last month those moves towards political Islam will be strongly cemented.  Islamist parties generally call for strict enforcement of Islam’s sexual mores as codified in traditional understandings of sharia.

Yet the submitted United Nations report does not mention the word “Islam” even one time, nor the word “Sharia.”  For those who prefer to make the distinction between sharia and fiqh, which not all Islamists do, the word “fiqh” does not appear either.  The submitted report, which was compiled by a set of LGBT advocates, does mention that the Turkish military continues to use an old version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) that codified homosexuality as a mental disorder.  They do not speculate on what would cause Turkish military psychologists to refuse to accept the revisions to the DSM, now generations old, that changed this understanding of homosexuality.  Even if you think the connection between codified religious law and a refusal to move off the old DSM is not obvious, surely it is a question that deserves to be asked.  Yet even these LGBT organizations refuse to ask the question.

A similar but far lighter story played out this weekend in the United States.  There lesbian newscaster Sally Kohn denied the connection between sharia and violence against her community.  A satirical petition began to get her to spend a week without guards in a sharia-compliant city:

A lot of right-wing nazi bigots are saying Sally Kohn is an idiot for showing support for Sharia Law, especially considering that she is a gay woman. As progressives, we know both Sharia Law and Muslims are tolerant and very LGBTQ friendly.

In order to show how LGBTQ friendly the Sharia, and it’s practitioners, are, Sally Kohn should spend a week’s holiday proudly displaying her homosexuality in Raqqa/Riyadh or any other place where Sharia is the law of the land, without guards of course, to show how safe, and how pro LGBTQ these practitioners of Sharia Law are.

Kohn’s response to this petition was instructive.  She said that she opposes what she characterized as “authoritarian right wing extremism” in countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran.  However, she said, there were at least two non-Muslim nations on the list of nations in which homosexuality is punished by death.  Likewise, there were several Muslim majority nations in which homosexuality is not punished by death.  (Sometimes, she did not mention, it is merely punished with prison.)  Thus, she denied any necessary connection between sharia and violence against LGBT citizens.

Rather, she would like to try to paint this as an issue of a broad political left versus a broad political right — broad enough that it is somehow sensible to speak of “authoritarian right wing extremism” in Iran and Saudi Arabia as being like right wing politics anywhere else.

Perhaps Kohn should investigate her assumption here by checking with Hillary Clinton, whom Kohn has endorsedin the Presidential election.  Yet according to a report by Paul Sperry, Clinton’s liberal attitudes on sexual rights turn out to be constrained — just when she’s speaking to audiences in places like Saudi Arabia.

[I]n 2010, Huma Abedin arranged for then-Secretary of State Clinton to speak alongside Abedin’s hijab-wearing mother at an all-girls college in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. According to a transcript of the speech, Clinton said Americans have to do a better job of getting past “the stereotypes and the mischaracterizations” of the oppressed Saudi woman. She also assured the audience of burqa-clad girls that not all American girls go “around in a bikini bathing suit.”

At no point in her long visit there, which included a question-and-answer session, did this so-called champion of women’s rights protest the human rights violations Saudi women suffer under the Shariah laws that Abedin’s mother actively promotes. Nothing about the laws barring women from driving or traveling anywhere without male “guardians.”

What does Hillary Clinton know that Kohn does not, that causes Clinton to agree that bikinis are shameful and unworthy of female dignity when speaking to an Islamist audience?  What does she know that causes her to avoid raising these most obvious of issues, or to challenge sharia’s legitimate power to force the submission of women as well as LGBT citizens?  Clinton has no trouble challenging American “right wing extremists.”  Doesn’t that suggest that there’s an important difference here, one that explains both why the oppression is so much stronger in Islamist nations and also why even ordinarily outspoken liberals like Clinton are afraid to challenge it there?

One can understand the hesitance of the LGBT groups in Turkey to raise the issue, as they might be burned alive.  Kohn and Clinton have no such excuse.  If they are not going to provide aid and comfort to these LGBT groups in Turkey, who will?  Would Donald Trump?

Categories: Donald Trump, Erdogan, Hillary Clinton - "Feminist", Hillary Clinton and Islam, Islam and homosexuals, Islam in Saudi Arabia, Islam in Turkey, Islamic tolerance, Sharia law
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